


What Wind Is To Fire

by JustJasper



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Goodbyes, M/M, Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 04:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4773581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Our time at Skyhold rather spoilt us with the idea of what we could have had, in a simpler life."</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Wind Is To Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains spoilers for the Trespasser DLC.

**“Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great.” - Roger de Bussy-Rabutin**

The numerous, well-stocked parties at the Winter Palace wind down after two days. The Inquisition, as it still stands, leaves for Skyhold without Cadash with much less fanfare than how they arrived. She gave up the function of being Inquisitor with the mark and her damn forearm, even though the title and the institution remains, in some form.

“I was only the Inquisitor because of the mark,” she says, over ale, scratching at the stump of her arm. He wonders if it itches like his fingers itched, or the socket where his eye once was. “Seems right for me to stop being the Inquisitor when I lose it.”

“I hear you're taking up another name, anyway,” The Bull says, grinning at her. “Something about making lots of new _friends_.”

“What can I say, I'm a people-person.”

Sera's grown a lot, got her head on straighter. Still not one to cross, and probably even more dangerous, now. She and the Boss are going to make Orlais crap itself.

“What about Josephine?”

He wonders about them, about how they're doing. They always seemed so steady, a foregone conclusion. Cadash and Josephine spent about twice as much time together in the past two years as he and Dorian have, he figures. Even with all the Inquisition crap they've had to do, most of it has been within a surmountable distance of each other.

The Bull and Dorian had travelled together and then Dorian crossed into Tevinter, gone the good part of a year, with just a few days together here and there, when they can get up to the border. He'd been fucking ecstatic to see him return.

“She'll always be where my heart is, but I think she wants this as much as I do. Something about not watching me burn out.” She takes a drink of her ale then, watching him. He's not surprised at what follows. “You're going to follow him, aren't you?”

He could argue. He could explain to her how messed up Tevinter is, and how much other crap is piled on the situation. He gets the feeling she knows that already.

“Yeah.”

“You're a good man, Iron Bull.”

“And you're a good woman, Boss. The damn best. What you need is a dagger arm. Nothing to stop you keeping on being a throat cutter.”

She laughs, relieved. This is an easier conversation, for the both of them.

“Sera tells me she's got plans. Or, her Widdles has plans. Something about 'magic-ish non-magic shite'. Apparently Varric told Sera to get me a crossbow I could fire one-handed, and she didn't laugh in his face. She's got ideas.”

“Whatever it is, you're gonna look badass.”

“That's true. Glowing green hands are passé, Vivienne assured me. It's time to update my look.”

They drink, and Cadash pretends she isn't in pain, although the Bull can tell she's feeling something by the way she holds her shortened arm. The phantom feeling might not ever leave her, entirely. Still, he knows her, and knows she thinks it's better than dying.

\---

Dorian, a man who enjoys his drink, hasn't been drunk since the last night before the Exalted Council. He'd been perfectly companionable to their friends, and they've fucked eight times in last two days, but the last of the old Inquisition left the Winter Palace earlier in the day, and they were all that remained, Dorian and the Iron Bull and his Chargers.

There's a certain inevitability to it, in their shared guest room, the headboard marred with somewhat vindictive horn grooves and scorch marks. Dorian stands by the window, and the Bull sits on the bed, removing his harness.

“I'll go with you,” the Bull says, reigniting a conversation that's too exhausting to dance around. Dorian turns on the spot.

“You can't.”

“You can't do this alone, Dorian.”

“I'm not going to be alone. I have Maevaris, and-” He waves his hand, smiling his practiced smile, that doesn't reach his eyes. He's so _tired_.

“I know Maevaris is powerful as shit,” the Bull says, because for a magister she sounds both hot and badass, “but you need more. I can protect you. Some magisters must have qunari slave bodyguards.”

“Even if the idea of you playing pretend as a slave didn't turn my stomach-” Dorian says, and actually looks like he might retch for a moment, before he gathers himself. “It will not work. Qunari slaves are nearly unheard of in public, and you can't walk the Imperium a free man, it's preposterous.”

“I like to stand out.” The Bull smirks at him, but the smile he gets in return is as forced as his own.

“I am going back to change things. I can't be seen to own slaves, or oppose hostilities with Par Vollen if I had a slave qunari bodyguard.”

“A paid bodyguard, then. I know there's Vashoth in Tevinter. I could be one of them, some hired muscle to flex and look menacing. I can be useful.”

“Amatus,” Dorian's voice wavers, and his eyes shine in the light of the dying day. “I cannot let the Imperium have you. Only I have you.”

The Iron Bull wishes that Dorian was not right in his assessment of the situation. If only the man had missed something, some trick or avenue that could be explored. There is nothing.

“We'll be apart.” His tongue is thick on the words, forming finally real in his mouth now. A year apart was one matter, with the promise of a reunion, but this holds no such thing. Tevinter will not be fixed in a year.

“No,” Dorian says gently, sadly. “Not all the time. Our time at Skyhold rather spoilt us with the idea of what we could have had, in a simpler life.”

“We could have a simpler life,” the Bull says, rising slowly to his feet. “If you want it, I'll give it to you. Fuck Tevinter, we'll visit Rivain like we wanted. Find a place in Orlais, or Antiva, or Nevvara. Shit, we'll get a little farm in the Hinterlands if you want.”

“Would you truly be happy, Bull?” Dorian says, tears shimmering in his eyes. “ _Settling_? Not fighting with your Chargers, instead poking around a farm, or whiling away the hours getting fat on Orlesian food?”

“Yes, with you.”

His conviction seems to startle Dorian, and he sobs, as the tears overflow and spill down his cheeks. The Bull closes the distance between them and wraps his arms around Dorian, who heaves great sobs into his chest.

He's been cruel. To tell Dorian that he would be happy have those mundane lives, and be happy with them if they were together, when he knows, because he knows Dorian better than anyone, that as much as Dorian might _like_ those options, he can't _choose_ them.

They stand together as Dorian cries, grief for a life they saw a glimpse of. Perhaps a life he dreamed of, once. A life the Bull has thought of, too, despite never thinking it was possible for him. Purpose in the simple, mundane things: teaching village children to fight, growing crops in a field, or travelling, seeing, experiencing things for no reason but their desire. That might have been possible, in another time.

“I know you have to go back,” he says, lips against Dorian's hair.

“Yes.”

They stay together for a long while, letting the silence stretch and the darkness fall. It can't be the end, but the night feels like a curtain, and the Bull isn't ready for this to stop.

“I feel,” Dorian begins, pulling away to look up at the Bull. “I feel I should have led with this.”

“With what?”

“I have something for you. For us.”

Dorian crosses to his pack, and rummages one-handed as he lights wall sconces and the fire in the grate with a flick of his other. When he returns, he's holding the matching halves of their dragon tooth necklaces, and even though his eyes are slightly red, he's grinning.

“What have you done?” the Bull says, and he can feel himself mirroring the expression. “I knew you weren't just going to have them re-set, you sly dog.”

“You know me.”

The Bull holds out his hand, and onto it Dorian places his half of the tooth. It looks no different, save for a new, sturdier chain and a brighter polish. It's still set in the strange shimmer of dragonbone, but as he turns it over in his hand it _feels_ different. Heavier? No. Like it has more presence in his hand. Strange.

Dorian holds up his own for the Bull to see, the flat, metal-backed part facing upwards. The Bull turns his into the same position. He sees it then, a groove in the metal, and he slides his thumb from top to bottom.

“Oh, got it in one, amatus!”

The metal seems to melt away from the centre, revealing the filed back of the tooth and a deep purple crystal inlaid snugly inside it.

“These were not easy to come by, and I would have very much have liked to have had Dagna construct them, but she was otherwise indisposed. She did, however, put me on to a fellow closer to the Imperium, who was just as talented as she claimed. His single-minded enthusiasm was rather charming.”

“What is it, Dorian?” The Bull asks, still smiling, because Dorian is excited to show him whatever this is.

“It's a sending crystal. This is one of two pairs I was able to procure. I have given one to Cadash, and I'm giving one to you.”

“What does it send?”

“Sound. Over any distance on this earth, this pair forms a link that cannot be severed, short of the crystals being shattered.” Dorian rocks forward on the balls of his feet, and reveals the crystal in his own half. “You simply press your thumb to the crystal-”

Dorian presses his thumb down on his crystal, and in the Bull's palm, his own begins to pulsate in small, rapid vibrations, and to glow a purple that reminds him of Dorian's necromancy magic.

“We can send a connection to each other, and you just have to touch your crystal too, to establish it.”

The Bull holds his thumb over the exposed crystal for a second, two, and the pulsing stops, while the glowing remains.

“See?”

The Bull almost flinches, to hear Dorian's words echo strangely in the space between them. A second after he speaks, the same word comes from the Bull's crystal, clear as if he'd spoken the word twice.

“A little pointless, at this distance,” Dorian says, each word echoing through the Bull's necklace. “To severe the link, you press down on the crystal in the same manner.”

Dorian does so and both crystals stop glowing. Dorian runs his thumb back over the groove in the metal, and the back reforms to cover the crystal. The Bull does the same, staring at the shimmering metal.

“Sandal did a wonderful job, allowing the crystals to maintain connection without constant physical contact. We can talk whenever we like. We can talk every day! Even when we're not together, we'll know that we're safe.”

The Bull turns the tooth over in his hand, watching the firelight play of the metal and the bone.

“This is magic,” he says, voice soft.

“Enchantment. A form of magic, I suppose, but one a dwarf can master, better than any other, it would seem.”

“We can—” There's a lump in his throat, and he struggles for more words. Suddenly, there's something to bridge the impossible gap he felt opening between them, a link so sure and real, made possible by a magic that glows the same colour as one that raises the fucking dead.

“Bull?”

He puts the necklace on around his neck, and as soon as the familiar weight sits on his chest, he feels grounded again.

“Kadan, you thought of everything.”

“I am very clever,” he says, but the words are gentle for a boast, and he slips his own necklace on, too. “We will never truly be apart. Not ever, my love.”

The Bull reaches for him, taking his face in hand gently and leaning down to kiss the man he is going to love for all his days. This man, who is returning to a land that would have seen him in ruin simply for existing with dignity and honesty. A man too good for a rotten country like Tevinter. A man who has given him his heart, and accept his in turn.

“There is a boat, in the morning. I have to leave tonight, to make the journey.”

It's not enough. He knows that Dorian has to go, that he cannot and will not stop him, but there's no reason that this has to be the moment that what they have changes.

“It would be safer to travel by land.”

Dorian cocks an eyebrow at him.

“The Chargers will escort you to the border. Much safer.”

Dorian is grinning again. “Oh?”

“Yes. Might take a while, though. Big company, steady progress. Safe passage, though.”

“How long would the trip to the border of the Imperium take, then?”

“At least a month,” the Bull says, shrugging a little. “If the journey doesn't have any detours.”

“So, it could run over, potentially.” Dorian's fucking glowing, eyes bright and holding onto the Bull like he's no intention of letting go.

“We'll try our best to keep you on schedule, but you never know what might come up.”

“That sounds reasonable.” Dorian can't keep the delight out of his voice. “I definitely think it's a sound idea, provided we set off first thing in the morning, so we make good time.”

“We should probably get some rest, then, kadan.” The Bull looks quite deliberately over at the bed, and Dorian begins to push him towards it.

“Yes, eventually we should, amatus.”

“ **There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.” - Jeffrey Eugenides**


End file.
